Injection molding has been widely spread and used in various applications such as mechanical parts, automobile parts, electric and electronic parts and containers for food and drugs because it is capable of producing molded articles having a complicated shape with a high productivity. In particular, containers for beverages, etc., have been frequently constructed from an injection molded article because a mouth portion of these containers is formed into an excellent threaded shape in order to ensure sufficient tightening of a cap thereon.
As the material for injection molding articles, there have been used various general resins including polyolefins such as polyethylene and polypropylene, polyesters and polystyrenes. Of these resins, polyolefins such as polypropylene have been extensively used in various applications such as containers because they are excellent in flowability and heat resistance upon molding as well as exhibit a light weight and a low moisture absorption and are available at low costs.
However, the polyolefins tend to be deteriorated in barrier property against gases such as oxygen and are, therefore, unsuitable as containers for preserving contents that are apt to be adversely affected by oxygen, etc., or as containers for food or drugs which are required to exhibit a good keeping property under severe environmental conditions such as high-temperature conditions. In consequence, there are disclosed methods in which a barrier material such as polyamides is blended in the polyolefins to improve a barrier property of the polyolefins (refer to Patent Documents 1 and 2).
These methods might improve a barrier property of the polyolefins to some extent. However, the barrier material to be blended must be dispersed in the polyolefins in a specific condition, so that the polyolefins tend to be improved in barrier property only to an insufficient extent. In addition, these methods also have such a problem that molded articles obtained from the resin mixture tend to have a poor appearance owing to the polyamides that are locally present near a surface thereof. More specifically, the method of the Patent Document 1 requires a biaxial stretch blow molding procedure, and the molded articles obtained without conducting the biaxial stretch blow molding procedure tend to be deteriorated in barrier property. Whereas, the Patent Document 2 discloses the composite molded article made of a polyolefin matrix and an amorphous polyamide in the form of a plurality of masses dispersed in the polyolefin, but is silent about crystalline polyamides and polyamides having a m-xylylene skeleton.
Upon producing a molded article having a multilayer structure including polyolefin layers and a barrier layer by injection molding method, since a material for the barrier layer exhibit no adhesion to the polyolefin layers, the molded article is required to have, for example, a structure having at least five layers, i.e., a layer structure of polyolefin layer/adhesive layer/barrier layer/adhesive layer/polyolefin layer. The production of the molded article having such a multilayer structure tends to be accompanied with difficulties in view of its structure and moldability and, therefore, has been rarely practiced from industrial viewpoints. In consequence, there is disclosed a method in which a polyolefin is compounded with a modified polyolefin to enhance adhesion of a polyolefin layer to a barrier layer and necessitate no adhesive layer therebetween (refer to Patent Document 3). The method of the Patent Document 3 improves adhesion between the polyolefin layer and barrier layer, but requires a large amount of the expensive modified polyolefin to ensure sufficient adhesion between these layers. In addition, this method has such a problem that the resulting molded article tends to be deteriorated in heat resistance owing to addition of the modified polyolefin thereto.
The present inventors have previously proposed the polyamide resin obtained by polycondensation of a diamine component containing 70 mol % or more of m-xylylenediamine and a mixed dicarboxylic acid component containing an α,ω-linear aliphatic dicarboxylic acid and isophthalic acid (refer to Patent Document 4). The polyamide resin exhibits an excellent barrier property. However, it has been still required that a multilayer injection molded article produced using the polyamide resin is further improved in delamination resistance.
Patent Document 1: JP 2004-292037A
Patent Document 2: JP 2005-8664A
Patent Document 3: JP 2006-131275A
Patent Document 4: JP 2004-352985A